EU4 needs dynamic difficulty like Stellaris has.

[Victoria 3 finally]

Wait what? How the hell you do WC with a horde before 1600?

Wait the 1600 part freaked you out and not the 1500 one?

 

[Beagá]

Both did lol

 

[annulen]

At least, it should be possible to change AI settings after game start, in particular to harder side.

 

[Orioniys]

Personally I found Stellaris scaled difficulty not that impressive. It does provide a certain level of challenge, but AI just massively cheats along the way. It's better than what Eu4 currently has, but it's not the best solution imo.
I believe even veteran Players prefer playing on Normal Dif. Insane AI bonuses can be immersion breaking and just frustrating to play against, not to mention that it's a very cheap solution that would just mask AI problems.

What would be more interesting is the AI that is more competitive on higher difficulty. This is something that AoE2 definitive edition tried to do, the new AI they implemented uses common strategies from competitive mp.
It's not something that would take years to implement, you can find my own Eu4 AI mod in my signature. Most systems in Eu4 are relatively simple, there are just a lot of them, and the most time consuming part is probably testing.

 

[MatthewP]

Personally I found Stellaris scaled difficulty not that impressive. It does provide a certain level of challenge, but AI just massively cheats along the way. It's better than what Eu4 currently has, but it's not the best solution imo.
I believe even veteran Players prefer playing on Normal Dif. Insane AI bonuses can be immersion breaking and just frustrating to play against, not to mention that it's a very cheap solution that would just mask AI problems.

What would be more interesting is the AI that is more competitive on higher difficulty. This is something that AoE2 definitive edition tried to do, the new AI they implemented uses common strategies from competitive mp.
It's not something that would take years to implement, you can find my own Eu4 AI mod in my signature. Most systems in Eu4 are relatively simple, there are just a lot of them, and the most time consuming part is probably testing.

This is a subjective thing, but I partially disagree. Partially because of course there’s room to clean up EU4’s AI, and I support paradox doing more if it.

But even if you create a human-level AI for the game (which isn’t coming soon), it would still lose to a player. Why? Because the player is playing a game, while the AI is simulating a nation. If you could hypothetically create a human level AI that just plays the game like a player, that would be a really cool accomplishment. But then everyone would be playing multiplayer. I personally want a game where my opponents do pretend to be nations. But I also want a challenge. So the if the AI cheats, I don’t mind because I know I’m cheating too by not abiding by that enormous constraint.

And btw, I doubt either of us can prove it, but I’d be extremely surprised if most veteran stellaris players are just using the easiest difficulty with no AI bonuses. It’s just a silly level of easy, much more so than EU4.

 

[ArtFart]

If it's toggleable, I am up for this idea.

 

[Pellucid]

Personally I found Stellaris scaled difficulty not that impressive. It does provide a certain level of challenge, but AI just massively cheats along the way. It's better than what Eu4 currently has, but it's not the best solution imo.
I believe even veteran Players prefer playing on Normal Dif. Insane AI bonuses can be immersion breaking and just frustrating to play against, not to mention that it's a very cheap solution that would just mask AI problems.

What would be more interesting is the AI that is more competitive on higher difficulty. This is something that AoE2 definitive edition tried to do, the new AI they implemented uses common strategies from competitive mp.
It's not something that would take years to implement, you can find my own Eu4 AI mod in my signature. Most systems in Eu4 are relatively simple, there are just a lot of them, and the most time consuming part is probably testing.

Again, the difference in the amount of time it would take to code better AI versus coding in dynamic difficulty is probably many many orders of magnitude. I mean, I think even I with almost no programming experience could code a dynamic AI in a matter of hours just by adding events to the game that fire at set intervals for every AI player giving them various bonuses. I wouldn't even know where to begin to improve the actual playing AI.

Of course I'd prefer the AI be improved, but that's a much bigger ask.

 

[Orioniys]

This is a subjective thing, but I partially disagree. Partially because of course there’s room to clean up EU4’s AI, and I support paradox doing more if it.

But even if you create a human-level AI for the game (which isn’t coming soon), it would still lose to a player. Why? Because the player is playing a game, while the AI is simulating a nation. If you could hypothetically create a human level AI that just plays the game like a player, that would be a really cool accomplishment. But then everyone would be playing multiplayer. I personally want a game where my opponents do pretend to be nations. But I also want a challenge. So the if the AI cheats, I don’t mind because I know I’m cheating too by not abiding by that enormous constraint.

And btw, I doubt either of us can prove it, but I’d be extremely surprised if most veteran stellaris players are just using the easiest difficulty with no AI bonuses. It’s just a silly level of easy, much more so than EU4.

In my experience with modding AI in this game, the game changes quite a bit when AI starts to play better. One of the things that happened is AI GP's in a mid game truly become a Great Power, they are a big threat and challenge to overcome. In a way it creates a Crisis like in Stellaris.
When AI starts to have more agency in the game it creates content. Map painting becomes harder, and that's what not every one might enjoy. But for me personally at 4k hours playing with AI mod is the only way to enjoy the game outside of MP.

Another thing is that the game is designed around relatively weak AI. AI in my mod builds manufactories in 95% of the provinces, which means that there is more goods produced, more trade value in the world, which creates significantly more wealth.
Second issue is Force limit numbers, if AI builds right buildings, stacks military bonuses and fields 2mil troops in a late game. It's simply not fun to micro vs this.
So human level AI is something that I think is unreachable for this game, not to mention that this game utilizes only 2 CPU cores if I'm not mistaken.

Overall I'm happy to see any improvements to AI or difficulty. I think very competitive AI can change the game for the better, but the game needs to be redesigned or rebalanced to accommodate that change.

 

[annulen]

What would be more interesting is the AI that is more competitive on higher difficulty. This is something that AoE2 definitive edition tried to do, the new AI they implemented uses common strategies from competitive mp.

• If this means that AI will move stacks wisely, manage reinforcements in battles, doing sieges correctly - I'm all for this
• If this means using the same stack of idea groups from MP meta everywhere - no thanks. It can make sense in MP where everyone is using the same ideas, and in SP I'd like to see more variability. Perhaps it could work like "arms race" - if AI sees it's potential enemies have higher army quality, it starts taking military ideas and stacking bonuses to catch up or even have an edge over them, otherwise it focuses on boosting economy or reaching other goals.

 

[Orioniys]

• If this means that AI will move stacks wisely, manage reinforcements in battles, doing sieges correctly - I'm all for this
• If this means using the same stack of idea groups from MP meta everywhere - no thanks. It can make sense in MP where everyone is using the same ideas, and in SP I'd like to see more variability. Perhaps it could work like "arms race" - if AI sees it's potential enemies have higher army quality, it starts taking military ideas and stacking bonuses to catch up or even have an edge over them, otherwise it focuses on boosting economy or reaching other goals.

I tried making the AI that would go meta ideas, and yeah it was exactly like that it was rough to play against. In my opinion it's a balance problem, some ideas are just way stronger than the rest.

Ideas are kinda long term strategy, but by making AI a bit more adaptable would not hurt.
In fact there is a system like that in the game, AI personalities increase the chance that AI would pick certain idea groups. AI personalities are assigned at random at ruler death, but this random chance can be influenced.
And AI personalities themselves need some work, for some reason diplomatic AI can't diplo vassalize, to vassalize a nation AI needs a domineering attitude and diplomatic AI can't have that. And there might be even more issues.

Also probably making some AI system that would pick long term strategy is something that is in the realm of possibilities in general. Even if the system would be heavy on the performance side, there is no need to update it in real time, it just can be once in ~5 years or and only to major nations.

 

[Militantti Talitintti]

Why would anyone disagree with this suggestion? It would of course be an optional setting...